Good to see things have turned out OK for him. Good kid. Character guy. Would have been a nice fit.

“A lot of water under the bridge since then,” he said.

Some days, it doesn't pay to get out of bed. At least that's how Drayton McLane must feel when he watches Stubbs.

No matter how hard he tries to get things right, no matter how many times he tells people he now gets it, there are going to be days when those past mistakes plop down on your desk and make themselves at home.

That's what happened Wednesday as Stubbs singled, doubled and walked in Cincinnati's 6-4 victory over the Astros at Minute Maid Park.

Those two hits raised his average all the way to .172, so it would be a mistake to say the kid is on his way to being one of baseball's next great things.

On the other hand, Stubbs is just 25 years old and has had all of 244 major league at-bats. He has speed and strength and a great makeup, and a lot of scouts think he has a chance to be special.

The Reds made Stubbs the eighth pick of the 2006 draft and gave him $2 million after a career at the University of Texas that included a national championship.

Now about where he might have ended up. Back in 2003, the Astros took him in the third round of the draft out of Atlanta High School after agreeing to meet his $900,000 asking price.

“Yeah, I thought this was where I'd be,” he said.

That deal was never made. Major League Baseball scolded McLane for paying more than the preset slotting price, and McLane ordered his personnel department to kill the deal.

Stubbs enrolled at the UT and three years later got more than twice the money he'd originally sought.

“I put it behind me a month after it happened,” Stubbs said.

Maybe he'll make it and maybe he won't, but good organizations are built by stockpiling prospects like Stubbs.

Development deals

The Astros made lots of similar mistakes between 2002 and 2007. They either misjudged talent or squeezed money in all the wrong places.

When Ed Wade interviewed to be general manager, he was blunt in telling McLane there are no shortcuts and a productive minor league system is the lifeblood of a winning organization.

McLane admits now that he had trouble understanding the importance of scouting and player development. He preferred the immediate gratification he got from spending $100 million on Carlos Lee rather than $5 million on a bunch of prospects.

The Astros now are a different organization than the one that let Stubbs get away. They appear to have had two solid draft classes in a row and are aggressively pushing prospects through the minor league system.

But there will be other nights like this one. ESPN's Keith Law has three 2007 Astros' picks rated 46th, 64th and 82nd in the 2010 draft.

Misspent millions

Eibner would have cost the Astros $430,000. That deal also violated the slotting system, and McLane toed the line rather than irritate commissioner Bud Selig. Anyway, when you trace the collapse of the Astros, you start with short-sighted decisions like this one on a kid from The Woodlands.

The Astros decided Eibner wasn't worth $430,000, but a few months before, they'd given Woody Williams $12.5 million. They got eight victories for their $12.5 million.

The summer of 2007 was a really bad one for the Astros as they had just their second losing record in 16 years and failed to sign three of their top six draft choices. But something changed that year, too. McLane hired Wade, who began rebuilding the franchise from the bottom. That reconstruction is not done yet and won't be for a while.

But the worst appears to be over, at least as far as making silly, short-sighted decisions. Like the one to not sign Stubbs.